Dear Listmembers, A thousand e-mails (and only ten days) ago, I posted my article "Misunderstanding Ezra Pound" with the lamentable results that Mr. Surette had to apologize to everyone British, and En Lin Wei had to denounce everything Confucian. I wanted to respond publicly to several of the posted remarks. Leon Surette wrote: I have read Mr. Davis's "review" of four books which discuss Pound poetry and politics. The most recent of these books was published in 1989, and the earliest in 1980. It is difficult to understand how his piece qualifies as a review. It is, in fact, a diatribe against the entire class of Pound scholars masquerading as a review. The four books he selects are not as bad as he makes out, nor are they representative of the scholarly discussion of Pound's political and racial views. Mr. Surette is certainly correct when he says that my review is an attack. The attack is directed at all Pound scholars who use Pound's fascism, antisemitism, and alleged insanity to mitigate his poetic achievements. These tactics, far from being unrepresentative of the "scholarly discussion," are common and pernicious. Mr. Surette in his latest posting, entitled "Psychiatric Disorders," is attempting to diagnose Pound in much the same way E. Fuller Torrey does in his infamous book. What possible importance could such investigations have, as a critical approach? I suspect that Mr. Surette, like Mr. Torrey, is still searching for "the roots of treason." Leon Surette wrote: It is difficult to understand what contribution Mr. Davis believes himself to be making to the study of Pound's poetry and career. I think my intentions were perfectly clear. I also find it hard to believe that a man of Mr. Surrette's sophistication could find my positions "difficult to understand." What Mr. Surette seems to be saying, in a very scholarly and polite way, is that my article makes no contribution to Poundian scholarship. Perhaps he is right; I only wish Mr. Surette would have the courage to say that and then explain why he thinks so. For, without presenting an argument against my article, Mr. Surette seems to be defending those critical tactics which he himself subscribes to, while calling those very books "unrepresentative." As for my "contribution," I think that some consensus has been reached that Casillo's book is a miserable production (to paraphrase a number of dismissals I have read recently), and that Torrey's book is despicable (or, as Mr. Gill said, a book "which most academics (guilty, your honor) dismiss as motivated by something other than disinterested truth.") No one bothered to dismiss or defend Ms. Flory's critically incoherent volume, and I stand by my opinion on that book as well. I was, quite possibly, unfair to Massimo Bacigalupo's book in the main (as he pointed out to me recently), but then I was attacking his Foreword (which seems to broadly misrepresent the content and tone of the book as a whole). The Formed Trace aside for the moment, the dismissal of three books in particular (and several critical approaches in general) was my aim. It goes without saying that the dismissal of unjust books (by Poundian critics and scholars I might add) from the canon of responsible criticism is a worthy goal, in my opinion. Finally, I put myself on the side of the angels, which means alongside Mr. David Moody. I agree with the sum and substance of his email (5/31/00), which criticized the positions of En Lin Wei. Mr. Wei, it seems to me, is doing Robert Casillo's work all over again, this time through an anti-Confucian lens. Such an essentially political approach is bound to be fruitless, I maintain. Why? Mr. Moody shall have the last word, "In general, poets do seem to have a better sense of how to read them [The Cantos] than critics. But then critics seem all too often not to have their eye on the poetry." Garrick Davis Contemporary Poetry Review (www.cprw.com)